Creating great content, having a stellar website, building relationships and working on your social media game are all factors that work to generate interest or leads in your business.

But at what point does this interest become profitable?

Lead nurturing is the process of bridging the gap between non-sales ready leads, and sales-ready leads, through providing highly relevant educational content that helps build brand and product preference long before the prospect is ready to buy.

I work remotely, which means that I have to keep myself motivated so that I don’t end up looking at cat memes all day. It’s tough, and I’ve had more than one encounter with someone who’ll admit that they’d never be up to the task. Heck, I wasn’t even sure if I would be able to do it!

You’ve probably come across the term “online advertising” before in some form or another. It’s sometimes referred to as Search Engine Marketing (SEM), paid channel marketing, or pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. The terms are often used interchangeably to describe what is essentially the same concept – purchased or “rented” traffic through online ads.

But are you really convinced? If you answered “yes” then please feel free to mosey on over to our pricing page to choose a package, so we can help you get you started with your inbound marketing strategy!

However, if you’re not convinced (I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you’re not?), then just hold on to your horses because I’m about to change your mind for good.

How?

With proof. With real business, just like yours, who have been built and who have grown using inbound marketing. Yes, that’s businesses that have used email, social media, SEO, their website and content marketing to help build and grow their businesses.

These aren’t cases of inbound marketing “kinda helped us, a little bit, maybe…”, but real-life proof that businesses – just like your one – can and do grow with inbound marketing.

Businesses built on inbound marketing are very possible – so here’s a few examples of businesses who’ve succeeded!

First up is the app that’s taking the world by storm recently – French Girls.

In part 5, A Guide To Off-Page SEO, we discussed social signals and how they can improve your search engine marketing game. This week we’re going to dedicate some time looking at social media marketing in more detail.

What Is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing that uses social networking sites as a marketing tool. Social media marketing usually involves businesses producing content that users will engage with and share with their friends, with the aim of driving traffic to that business’ website, increasing brand exposure and extending customer reach.

The rise of social media has meant that businesses are at the mercy of public criticism like never before. In this day and age, if you slip up, there’s nowhere to hide.

This has meant that more and more businesses are coming up with social media crisis strategies. These strategies can be utilized by businesses to prepare for a social media crisis and to train their employees in the most effective strategies when dealing with a crisis.

Remember, a crisis doesn’t have to be the end of your business. In fact, when it’s handled with due care, a crisis can actually have a positive impact on your business.

In Chinese, the word “crisis” is made up of the two words “danger” and “opportunity”. For every danger that a crisis presents, it also presents you with an opportunity to show the world what you (and your business) are made of.

Last week we talked about On-Page SEO and Usability. In that post we gave you an in-depth discussion an insight into the connection between the 2 topics, and then we moved on and looked at what factors affected on-page SEO and usability, such as site design, mobile optimization and internal links, and how a business can optimize each so that their site performs to the best of its ability.

This week, we’ll be talking about off-page SEO.

What is Off-page SEO?

Off-page optimization concerns factors that have an effect on your website or webpage listing in natural search results that aren’t controlled directly by you or the coding on your page, for example: links from other sites.

It seems that those who can benefit the most from marketing automation, aren’t using it. So it’s hard to not ask the question, what’s holding these businesses back?

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I think that part of the reason – besides a lack of understanding and resources – is fear.

Small businesses also have more to lose if an investment doesn’t work out, so they need to feel secure and confident in their marketing decisions. They need to know that marketing automation will help them grow their businesses.

And that’s where these marketing automation case studies come in.

Case studies work as proof of concept that bring real results to what was otherwise just a theory.

And if you’re considering investing in some new technology for your business, but don’t know which one, head on over our marketing automation software selection guide. Just answer a few questions and we’ll let you know what platforms will work best for your needs.

However, for those of you who aren’t yet convinced of the merits of marketing automation, ‘lo and behold the amazing results of these 5 marketing automation case studies.

At first glance, you might think that usability and on-page SEO (Search Engine Optimization) seem like 2 completely different topics.

SEO is about discovery – getting people to your website to begin with by making sure it shows up in search engines.

Usability is about people’s behavior and how people are able to interact with your site once they’re on it.

And while the two are separate and distinct topics indeed, they also see a lot of overlap.

So how do they 2 topics relate to each other?

Search engines, despite their best efforts, can’t understand the value (or sometimes the lack thereof) of text the same way that humans can, watch videos or view images, so they are forced to use other signals in order to gage a site’s worthiness and rank them accordingly. These signals come in the form of meta information (no, not necessarily meta tags) about how people relate to sites and pages. This information can then be used by search engines as an insight over the quality of the pages.

For example, if you’re searching for “dinosaur bones” and come across a site that’s slow to load, doesn’t have any real data or information on dinosaurs, or dinosaur bones, and is hard to navigate – then you’ll probably quickly leave and move on to another site. It’s not valuable to you, and search engines pick up on that information.

Of course, it’s not quite this simple, but the general principle stands.

Search engines strive towards improving their performance by providing the best results possible for its users. To do this, they look for information on what kind of pages and sites most satisfy their searchers needs. This information includes:

Pages and sites that are easy to navigate, use and understand

Content that provides direct, actionable information relevant to the query

Content that’s high quality, relevant and credible

Having great SEO but lousy usability means that you’ll get lots of traffic, but the visitors won’t turn into customers. Conversely, a site with great usability but lousy SEO simply won’t get many visitors, so it doesn’t really matter how good it is.

So it’s suffice to say that usability and on-page SEO often intertwine, overlap and affect each other in many ways.

Like anyone who is strapped for time, I’ve also found multi-tasking to be a huge benefit. From putting a wash on as I work out, to starting the pasta and setting a timer as I finish up some work projects, to walking my dog and listening to the latest podcast. I even automate my lunches. I make all of my lunches the Sunday before, and know what I’m going to be eating every single day.

And then, with the rise of technology, automating tasks and updates began to take a life of its own. From automating weather updates directly to my phone, to getting flight alerts sent directly to my mail – automating began to take a huge role in my life because it made so much sense to me.

Who doesn’t want to save time on repetitive tasks? Who doesn’t want to become more efficient? Who doesn’t want to spend more time doing what they love?

Automating your social media marketing works the same way as the tasks that many of us have automated in our day-to-day lives. Social media can suck time out of your day that, especially as business owner, you just can’t afford to sacrifice. But marketing your social media marketing poses one big, scary question:

“How do you automate your social media marketing, without having to sacrifice being engaged in conversations with your audience?”

It’s a good question, and fortunately, it’s also one I have an answer to.